In order to succeed in business today, it’s essential to have an online presence.
Nobody would argue with that statement. Yet defining what goes into a powerful digital marketing plan can be subjective at best. Is social media important? Do you still need a website? How much of the work can you do yourself?
If you’ve had these questions, you’re not alone. Marketing can be an all-encompassing proposition. But if you’re charged with bringing more customers into the business, how you go about it is key.
Understanding Digital Marketing
Before we dig deeper into digital marketing, let’s look at a few numbers to get started:
- There are more than 5.35 billion active internet users in the world
- There are hundreds of billions of web pages indexed through Google
- There are more than 1.11 billion websites in the world
- 82 percent of websites on the internet are inactive (yep, sitting there gathering dust)
Anytime you see the word “billion,” it can feel overwhelming. How can your small web presence vie for attention? That’s where a digital marketing plan comes into play.
Digital marketing refers to any marketing strategy utilizing web-based technologies to build their brand and satisfy their customers’ needs. It’s connecting to customers through various online channels, including websites, email, search engines, and social media.
Why Have a Digital Marketing Plan in Place?
Businesses market for a reason. A marketing plan can help you:
- Identify your target market
- Find your benefits
- Identify how to attract a new customer base
- Encourage repeat business
A digital marketing plan focuses that effort on how you find success online. Building a successful digital marketing plan involves spending time crafting an objective, identifying the audiences you wish to target, and determining what you hope to accomplish.
Once you’re clear about your goals, analyze every core element and how it will help you achieve success.
What Are These Core Elements?
We often see marketers get caught up in the details. They set up profiles on every social media site, for example, without thinking about how it impacts the bottom line.
Core elements are broader by nature, yet can be quite detailed once you have a plan in place. This is about understanding who you’re trying to reach and what they want most. This is about refinement. A digital marketing plan is meant to change and grow as you dive into the details, expand, and grow.
Dig Deeper
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Where do you begin?
1. Website
Should you have a website? Should you have a blog? These questions are highly debatable, and you’ll find “experts” who argue both sides of the issue.
Yet in many aspects, a website is a core element of any good business. Its value is no different than that of a phone number, business card, or even brochure in years past.
A website is the online address of your business. Without it, you won’t have the control to guide people to your information in quite the same way. Your website should:
- Be user-friendly
- Be succinct in the message it delivers
- Include all the essential elements to connect with you
- Be professionally designed and easy to navigate
- Use analytics to understand performance
2. SEO
Once you have a website in place, search engine optimization (SEO) can help reach out to customers. SEO enables you to be found in search engines like Google or Bing. When you optimize the pages on your website or blog, you rank better for the keywords people search for.
SEO is not as easy as it seems. It’s an ongoing process that is worked over time to help you stay findable and in front of your target audience.
3. Social Media
Social media should be a part of every digital marketing plan. By utilizing social media channels, you can connect to prospects and customers in a friendly manner, leading them to your products and services.
While social media is vital to your marketing plan, that doesn’t mean you have to actively use every social media platform that exists. Define your target audience and what they want and reach out on the channel that makes the most sense for your business.
4. Paid Ads
SEO helps you rank naturally on search engines for your most popular keywords. Social media allows you to grow your expertise on a platform that works for you. When you use paid ads, you can gain quick exposure to a targeted audience and test out various parts of your business. Paid ads can be used for:
- Brand exposure
- Selling
- Building a list
- Testing new ideas
5. Content
Content will always be king. You can use content for every aspect of your digital marketing plan. Content can include blog posts, videos, photos, social media posts, and so on. As you create it, you can share it for brand awareness, lead generation, traffic, growing your customer base, building a reputation, and more. Without content, your digital marketing plan will wane.
6. Email
Think email marketing is dead? Think again. Statistics show global email users stand at 4.5 billion users. If you want business growth, you can’t ignore email as a core part of your strategy. Luckily, you can utilize all of the content you create for online exposure and use it to create email as well. It’s a great way to reach out to people who might not see you in other resources.
7. Analytics
Without an analytics plan in place, you’ll never understand how well your business meets its goals. Many analytics tools can help you measure efficiency and effectiveness and see how well the various components are working for you. This allows you to ramp up what’s working, change what isn’t, and really dig into how well prospects and customers like what you do.
How Successful Is Your Digital Marketing Plan?
The key to any successful digital marketing plan is to utilize the various marketing channels to the best of your ability. It’s an ebb and flow of planning, execution, and analysis to find out what works. This isn’t about just finding a solution and sticking with it. Instead, it’s about refining your approach over and over again as you continue to grow.
Where are your strengths and weaknesses when building an effective digital marketing plan?
